WASHINGTON, July 10 (UPI) -- The National Security Agency, which collected cellphone and online data from technology companies, also tapped fiber cables, The Washington Post said Wednesday.

The newspaper said it has obtained a classified NSA slide listing "two types of collection," showing the agency had a data collection category called "Upstream" that accessed "communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past."

That was in addition to PRISM, which collects information from technology companies and has been widely reported by the Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The slide does not make clear the ways in which Upstream and PRISM interact but it instructs intelligence analysts to use both methods, the Post said Wednesday.

A former judge on the secret U.S. court overseeing government surveillance requests says he was shocked by changes forcing the court to OK blanket surveillance.

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "has turned into something like an administrative agency," retired U.S. District Judge James Robertson testified during a hearing of a federal oversight board, directed by President Barack Obama to examine government spying and civil liberties after rogue National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked significant information about the NSA's spying program.

"A judge needs to hear both sides of a case," Robertson, who served on the secret surveillance court from 2002 to 2005, told the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in the first public hearings since Snowden's revelations.

"What FISA does is not adjudication, but approval," Robertson said, referring to the court by its shorthand moniker, after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that created it.

"This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants," Robertson continued. "But the 2008 amendment has turned the FISA court into administrative agency making rules for others to follow.

"It is not the bailiwick of judges to make policy," he said.

Robertson's comments were the first significant public criticism from a current or former FISA judge. FISA judges until now mainly spoke anonymously to defend the court process, British newspaper The Guardian said.

The 11-member FISA court, created to provide legal oversight and protect against unnecessary privacy intrusions, originally focused mostly on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders.

After Congress' 2008 reform of the FISA system, the court had greater oversight of intelligence operations and was required to approve entire surveillance systems, or what Robertson called "programmatic surveillance," rather than just surveillance warrants.

This turned the court almost into a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues, current and former officials familiar with the court's classified decisions told The New York Times last week.

FISA court opinions will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Robertson testified Tuesday he was "stunned" by the Times report, which said the FISA court had created a secret body of law empowering the NSA to amass vast amounts of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in espionage, cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation.

He said he was originally impressed with how "careful, fastidious and scrupulous" the court process was but said with the court's expanded role, the so-called ex parte system, in which only the federal government is allowed to make its case before the court, needed immediate reform.

"This process needs an adversary. If it's not the ACLU or Amnesty [International], perhaps the PCLOB can be that adversary," Robertson said.

Oversight board members shook their heads and rolled their eyes at the suggestion their board serve as adversary, The Guardian reported.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Our govt is in what may be the most corrupt era ev'r. Criminals are at the top of the organization chart and not just in America.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Our govt is in what may be the most corrupt era ev'r. Criminals are at the top of the organization chart and not just in America.

It was on TV? Are you talking about prisonplanet.tv?

__________________

"I'll see you guys in New York." ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to US military personnel upon his release from US custody at Camp Bucca in Iraq during Obama's first year in office.

Is that on TV? If so, I've never seen it. And I don't read that site either.
Come to think of it, it may have been on FOX. Rs interviewing the people who claimed it was done, were smiling that they could do it too. Yup, sounds like it could be FOX with that.

Either way, that's not an argument. It's a logical fallacy. Are going to be loneiguana today?

Is that on TV? If so, I've never seen it. And I don't read that site either.
Come to think of it, it may have been on FOX. Rs interviewing the people who claimed it was done, were smiling that they could do it too. Yup, sounds like it could be FOX with that.

Either way, that's not an argument. It's a logical fallacy. Are going to be loneiguana today?

No, I'm not trying to argue. I was just making fun of your ridiculous post. It's such an improbable theory that even if someone really did say it on TV, no one with any common sense should have taken them seriously without compelling supporting evidence.

__________________

"I'll see you guys in New York." ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to US military personnel upon his release from US custody at Camp Bucca in Iraq during Obama's first year in office.

No, I'm not trying to argue. I was just making fun of your ridiculous post. It's such an improbable theory that even if someone really did say it on TV, no one with any common sense should have taken them seriously without compelling supporting evidence.

It's not improbable at all. Data like that is highly valued by all marketers and they'd love to get that kind of data. So I can see an incumbent using his advantages as an incumbent to use it. It's bound to happen, that's why it should never be allowed to be such a broad use. It will eventually get abused. You trust the state and politicians way too much to be considered a libertarian or conservative. You're very naive. Including about marketers.

I mean why do you think all those contests are being used by companies? To get your email to market to you. More data in a profile is always a plus. That's how Obama's campaign used it, to more easily target certain groups with certain promotions.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Our govt is in what may be the most corrupt era ev'r. Criminals are at the top of the organization chart and not just in America.

Not only that but Obama's Re-election Campaign used data from NSA spying for their marketing which really helped them win. It helped them to better target voters they could sway based on their traffic and content. It was on TV. So much for the information being used for National Security or classified. This is executive abuse. This means, if they use it, then the next president R or D will use it.

Our govt is in what may be the most corrupt era ev'r. Criminals are at the top of the organization chart and not just in America.

I'd throw my full support behind a police state if they'd send your crazy ass to the gulag.